Operations on real signals, such as RF signals, are usually concerned with only the amplitude and phase characteristics of the signal, and not with the information about the carrier signal. In other words, these operations are only concerned with the complex envelope of the signal. Accordingly, a primary objective in signal processing is to extract the complex envelope from the real signal. The complex envelope of the signal of interest may be obtained from the analytic signal via demodulation. As those of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate, the analytic signal is simply the positive frequency component of the real signal. The complex envelope is extracted from the real signal by demodulating the signal to baseband and low-pass filtering the resultant baseband signal. The response of the filter is symmetric about zero. Accordingly, the coefficients are real. The negative frequency components of the signal are eliminated by the filter. This results in an analytic signal at baseband, or the complex envelope of the signal.
In practice, RF signals are typically directed into one or more mixers that down-convert the RF signal into some intermediate frequency (IF). Most modem communication systems employ digital signal processing. Accordingly, after the RF frequency is shifted to the intermediate frequency (IF), one or more analog to digital converters (ADC) are employed to convert the IF analog signal into a digital format.
The IF signal is shifted to baseband (i.e., the center frequency is zero hertz) by further demodulation and filtering. Therefore, the resulting digital data may be digitally demodulated and filtered. The sampling rate may also be reduced. The filtering is designed to attenuate those frequencies or frequency bands which would become aliased to baseband when the sampling rate is reduced. Because the sampling rate cannot be reduced until after the filtering, the demodulator must accommodate high data rates. In high frequency circuits, such as in those implemented in radar systems, analog mixers are typically required to convert the frequency band of interest (BOI) to an IF prior to A to D conversion.
The mixer may be significant in terms of cost, size, and weight. Mixers also raise concerns about electromagnetic interference (EMI) and inter-modulation products. Further, there is also the associated cost of the local oscillator circuitry and timing circuitry.
In one approach, a single chip converter that includes an embedded analog mixer has been considered. However, the process of first mixing, then sampling is the same as the process described above. This approach also requires the local oscillator circuitry and timing circuitry. Some of these single chip converters may operate at relatively high sampling rates, on the order of 1 or 2 GHz. Some devices may operate at frequencies as high as 10-30 GHz. However, this approach has drawbacks. For example, the data provided by these chips is only 4 or 5 bits wide. In practical radar systems, at least 8 to 10 ADC bits are often necessary.
In other approaches, direct RF sampling techniques/architectures have been considered. These approaches are attractive because they seek to eliminate the functionality and limitations of local oscillators (LO) and mixers. However, there are drawbacks to these techniques as well. For large unambiguous instantaneous bandwidths, these techniques often require high ADC conversion rates, nominally over twice the carrier frequency, or the signal bandwidth, to comply with the Nyquist sampling theorem.
What is needed is an approach that directly samples and converts RF signals to baseband without the use of the analog circuitry normally used to mix RF signals prior to A to D conversion. A single device is needed to filter, demodulate, and convert an RF signal to digital format, without the use of mixer or local oscillator circuitry. This approach provides for a reduction in cost, size, weight of radar receivers. Such an approach would increase system reliability because fewer serial components would be required. EMI and inter-modulation product issues, normally associated with mixers, would likewise be eliminated. A single-chip device is needed that would allow slower ADCs to be used when sampling high frequency RF signals, such as X-band signals. A device such as this would accommodate larger digital word sizes because the ADC does operate at the lower rates. As noted above, while some integrated circuits already operate at these rates, the digital word size is relatively small (on the order of 4 or 5 bits).